A new subtype of diabetes was found and it may require different treatment

A new subtype of diabetes was discovered in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it is changing what we know about the disease. Those found to have the new type were originally diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, but research showed that certain markers of Type 1 were not actually present. The third subtype has only been seen in Black Africans and Black Americans, highlighting the dearth of knowledge about how the disease affects marginalized groups.

Type 3?

There are two commonly recognized forms of diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the "pancreas does not make insulin, because the body's immune system attacks the islet cells in the pancreas that make insulin," said UVA Health. This form is an autoimmune condition that tends to be hereditary, though not always. In Type 2 diabetes, the "pancreas makes less insulin than it used to, and your body becomes resistant to insulin," meaning "your body has insulin, but stops being able to use it." This form is a more common disease and can be developed due to certain risk factors like obesity, age or genetic predisposition.

However, another form of diabetes may have been discovered, according to a study published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Researchers looked at close to 900 people across Cameroon, Uganda and South Africa who had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes before the age of 30 and found that 65% of them "did not have antibodies typically present in autoimmune diabetes, nor did they have evidence of genetic predisposition to Type 1 diabetes," said a release by the University of Exeter. Those participants also "did not have features consistent with other known types of diabetes."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

These people seemed to have an entirely different form of diabetes than the one that falls under the Type 1 umbrella. "We have always wondered why many young people diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes manage to survive without insulin, at least for some time, which would be unusual in typical Type 1 diabetes," Jean Claude Katte, the lead author of the study, said in the release. A different type of diabetes also means that people with this third kind are not receiving the most effective treatment they could be, instead being treated for typical Type 1 diabetes.

Deficient data

While many cases of this third form of diabetes were found in Sub-Saharan Africa, researchers also compared the data to research conducted in the U.S. and found a prevalence in Black Americans, but not in white Americans. "The fact that Black Africans and Black Americans had this novel non-autoimmune subtype of diabetes suggests both genetic and environmental factors may contribute to it," said New Scientist.

"If two out of every three young patients in parts of Africa actually have a different disease, the global numbers — and the research priorities that follow — need a hard look," said Earth.com. Health care and medical research has largely neglected marginalized communities, leading to gaps in knowledge about how disease affects different groups. "At the moment, insulin remains the mainstay of treatment for this new diabetes subtype because they are also insulin-deficient," Katte said to New Scientist. Additional research is still necessary to determine what causes this particular type of diabetes. Then, a better treatment plan can be made for it.